BrewDog in the Winerack at the Waterfront...

 ...would be a good name for pub or maybe a 70s prog rock cover band.

But this was the headline the local paper reported that everyones favourite punk Scottish craft brewers BrewDog had applied to the local council for a drinks licence to open a new bar down in one of the empty units on the Ipswich waterfront.

The waterfront was or is Ipswich's attempt at a docklands style regeneration of the old industrial dock area & buildings turning it into a new cultural centre for Ipswich,which resulted in two of the tallest buildings in Ipswich the Mill and Winerack, if not the whole of Suffolk, built for residential flats, a new hotel and a new University campus, the majority of which were constructed by 2010, in between existing buildings that housed restaurants and a pub/bar.

The Mill on the left, the Winerack on the right

 

Unfortunately most of the construction work took place just as the last recession hit in 2007, whilst the majority of the buildings that were built were finished, the developer went bankrupt and work was ceased leaving the second tower block building as a concrete skeleton, which was nicknamed the Winerack as it looked exactly like a giant winerack, which loomed on the Ipswich skyline for the best part of a decade, and left most of the Waterfront project uncompleted and without much direction.

Nearly facing demolition having been left for so long uncompleted it was eventually bought by a local property developer who has since finished the construction and fitting out,adopted the Winerack name and is now finally looking to lease units at the bottom of the tower blocks, which have largely been boarded up this whole time.

Enter the BrewDog, who if local beer crowd rumours were to be believed are on the 3rd or maybe even 4th attempt at finding a venue in Ipswich over the last 5 years, which seems somewhat remarkable given as far as Im aware nothing from BrewDog themselves has ever hinted that Ipswich was on their radar as their next bar venture. Ipswich doesnt exactly have the kind of local beer scene BrewDog bars pop up in. Whilst a tap take over was held at a bar in the town a couple of years back, lots of tap takeovers are held they dont necessarily result in new bars opening.

 

And whilst as far back as 2020 before the pandemic hit, BrewDog announced plans to launch 30 new bars in the UK and across the world, this had understandably been scaled back by the end of 2020, to a mere 20, there was no hint Ipswich was among those venues, and nearly a year later many of those bars they did announce in the UK are still yet to open, whilst their existing locations are probably only slowly recovering from lockdowns, both in customers and staff retention.

So it seems an unusual move, whilst the location may well fit into BrewDogs urban style, though there are issues still in that the Waterfront and the majority of the town centres night economy are detached from each other, whilst the Waterfront arguably does need more bars to make it more of a leisure destination, the big downside of having built so much residential space before commercial and the planning zoning that resulted, means a drinks licence is automatically denied unless the applicant can prove it is beneficial to the area, given previous attempts by various sole trader businesses at getting a drinks licence in that part of the waterfront have failed, with more than a few handfuls of resident objections, it will be interesting to see if the licencing committee who next meet at the end of September, approve it.

If they do so, maybe more official announcements and planning submissions will go in, if not maybe theres no actual negative outcome for BrewDog since theyve not even confirmed its something they are doing anyway, but maybe there is something to be gained by proving these particular units wont ever be able to be bars if even the lure of well known brand cant get approved.